Too Much Reality?

 Reality Hunger is definitely a thought-provoking book about the nature of “reality.” I think that it accomplishes what it set out to do in creating an authentic snapshot of information in the modern world. However, since it is not the conventional way of organizing thought in literature, I found the book a bit hard to digest. I think that humans by nature like patters, and it was basically impossible to find any sort of pattern or coherence in Reality Hunger, simply because of what it set out to do. Also, I can understand why Shields takes offense to what he calls the “contrived feel” of popular novels, but I don’t think that most people read novels for the “reality” of them. I know that for me, I get enough reality every second of the day, and I enjoy reading fiction- I get plenty of reality without opening a book.